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Counterpart |OT| A parallel reality sci-fi espionage thriller w/ JK Simmons, Starz, starts 1/21

Keywork

Keywork

Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,125
Our household only has a Starz subscription because my wife loves "Outlander". All the women in my family and my wife's family love that show.
 
Einchy

Einchy

Member
Oct 25, 2017
42,659
RatskyWatsky said:

:/

:/
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Qvoth

Qvoth

Member
Oct 26, 2017
11,882
too male?
the fuck?
shame it didn't get renewed but season 2 is just weaker than season 1 anyway
 
Charpunk

Charpunk

Member
Oct 25, 2017
10,616
They would have been better off just not saying anything. Now I just want to punch something.
 
TheNatureBoy

TheNatureBoy

Member
Nov 4, 2017
10,782
Yeah, I never really thought of Starz having a core female strategy. Counterpart had a lot of great female characters when you look at Claire/Emily/Baldwin/Mira and even Naya in Season 2.
 
Keywork

Keywork

Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,125
They also cancelled "Now Apocalypse" because there weren't enough female viewers.

This is some more info on this new strategy from an Indiewire article:

To kick off the executive session, Hirsch outlined how Starz has found success in courting "traditionally underserved audiences" which "always included female audiences," but is focusing even more on women in the future.

"Starz delivers the highest composition of female viewership in premium cable, 18 and older," Hirsch said, adding that such high viewership is in part due to hiring women in creative leadership roles at the company. "65 percent of the leadership roles in our series — meaning showrunners, directors, and writers — are held by women."
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thediamondage

thediamondage

Member
Oct 25, 2017
11,235
I think in the coming streaming wars where people are gonna have to pick a basket of

Netflix
Amazon Prime
Disney+
HBO Max
Hulu
Apple TV+
any sports stuff people watch
regular cable
regular TV

and whatever other random subs/streams/twitch/etc people watch, Starz is going to have an extremely tough time justifying a $10-15 monthly sub and focusing on just female viewers is a strategy I suppose but I just don't see how it would work. Its simply not enough content to justify keeping it vs paying about the same for Apple or Disney+ or Netflix.

Starz is owned by Lionsgate which I believe is independent but I would pretty much bet in the next 10 years it gets swallowed by someone.
 
RatskyWatsky

RatskyWatsky

Are we human or are we dancer?
Member
Oct 25, 2017
14,931
The Hobo said:
Is he saying the show was too complicated for women?
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Pretty much lmao

It was very complicated and there's nothing wrong with being complicated. But to a certain extent, part of my view on the world today is for the most part people's lives are tough and when they come home at night and want to escape their lives, they want to be able to get into a piece of content very easily and escape. Counterpart was really hard for people to get into; it wasn't accessible.
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Magic Mushroom

Magic Mushroom

Member
Oct 25, 2017
11,434
I watched this over the past few weeks and really enjoyed it. It was Blindsight author Peter Watts' blog post that inspired me to watch this and I'm glad I did.

https://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=8855

And it was before an obscure little show called Counterpart lived and died and left scarcely a ripple. It is Counterpart I mourn today: one of the most underrated, understated SF series in recent memory.

You can be forgiven if you've never heard of it. You can be even be forgiven if you have heard of it— watched it, even— and never realized it was SF. The dialog, the acting, the sets— nothing about that show so much as whispered SF except the premise. In this way Counterpart shares a lot with Ronald Moore's Galactica reboot. Moore explicitly wanted to make "science fiction for people who hate science fiction": something that would sneak under your guard and let you think you were watching a drama set on a present-day aircraft carrier until some unexpected FX shot gave it all away with its starfields and spaceships. Parts of Counterpart's world looked downright retro (another parallel with BSG), for reasons which only gradually emerged over time.
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J.K. Simmons— the actor playing the Howards— is a one-man master class in understatement. He doesn't have to speak a word and you know which iteration you're watching by the tension in his shoulders, the way he holds himself. The body language is simultaneously subtle and unmistakable. And the scripts do something similar, convey epic divergence in the lowest of keys. Who would have thought that history could hinge so irrevocably on whether or not some middle-aged man gave his daughter a cassette tape of popular music? I don't think I've ever seen such a nuanced exploration of Butterfly Effects.

While you won't find any special effects in Counterpart, you will find terrorist attacks and germ warfare, violinists and assassins (big surprise, they're the same person); massacres and love stories. High-energy physics. Gulags and realpolitik and broken people in broken marriages. Science fiction, after all, isn't just about change. It's about the impact of that change on people and society, and in that sense— while the genre has frequently been both described as "the literature of ideas" and derided as "the literature of cardboard characters"— you can make a case that SF without good characterizations fails in its mission almost by definition. Counterpart most definitely does not fail as SF.
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Not only was the premise interesting with some nice philosophical conundrums but the acting was truly superb across the board.The Howards, Emilies, Peter and Clare were all truly excellent. Great little show.
 
RatskyWatsky

RatskyWatsky

Are we human or are we dancer?
Member
Oct 25, 2017
14,931
Scrapped plans for S3:

Season 3 began with the bright burning sun.

TILT DOWN to reveal we're in the desert. The farthest from any setting you would imagine after the first two seasons. We hear a song being sung in Arabic and reveal we're a construction site of some kind. Behind multiple levels of chain-link fences. A sign reads "WAKE-PILGRIM" which is important if you've seen Season 2.

You're probably checking your remote at this point. Are we sure this is COUNTERPART?

But this is COUNTERPART. And we're several miles outside of Tangiers, in Morocco.

Workers are steadily digging away at some kind of giant trench. It resembles an oil pipeline of some kind. But there's other technology around to indicate there is something more going on here. Something sci-fi, potentially.

Then suddenly there's an EXPLOSION OF SAND. The workers we just saw disappeared. The ground has completely imploded and everyone has been swallowed up into a giant pit. The workers on the outskirts are panicking, rushing around and trying to pull bodies from the debris.

We're on the lines of workers, HANDHELD, as they fight with each other to save their friends. Finally, we focus on one man as he drags a body out of the sand. He looks down at the body and his FACE DROPS. Next to him, another man has pulled out a body and his face also drops. All down the line everyone is frozen...

Because as we TILT UP, we reveal these workers have just pulled THEIR OWN BODIES FROM THE SAND. Wearing the exact same clothes. Their counterparts.

And then we SLAM TO CREDITS.
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Emily Prime... the central antagonist of Season 3. That's right, you heard me right. A woman who took it upon herself to guard the secret of the new crossing discovered in the opening moments of Season 3. A woman who spent her time hunting down our new character...

Max. A young weapons trafficker living in Morocco (Alpha side) who is deep in debt to the wrong people, until one night he meets Dez... his counterpart. A man who just recently discovered the Pipeline in Morocco and has a secret way to get trucks across. He proposal is simple: we go into business together, shipping medical supplies from my world into yours, in order to profit off the Flu that's been going on in the Alpha world for the last few years. Max is a reformed criminal trying to live an honest life (under a fake name). But Dez represents his id. The old version of himself wanting to come alive again. To break the law and go into a life of crime. They will have to go into business together... but Max very quickly realizes Dez is trying to betray him and take over the business for himself. So he arranges things in such a way that both counterparts must rely on the other to survive... even if they can't trust each other. And so a new buddy comedy is born. Well, not comedy, but you get my point.

Max/Dez is the new introduction for Counterpart Season 3 and we were so excited to write him. He was going to start a black market business shipping refugees from Alpha world into Prime world. Like CASABLANCA, but the twist was, he was in business with himself.

Eventually Max would cross paths with Emily Prime, who is trying to enforce strict control over the lawless border, as well as Clare and Quayle, who are trying to get to the bottom of who created this second Crossing and for what purpose.
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This show was built to continue. 2 seasons at a time.

The idea that we never revealed was that we wanted to tell complete stories, two seasons at a time. And every two seasons we would change locations dramatically and introduce a new main character. Some cast would continue, while others would go off and only come back occasionally. Like Marvel characters. I've always been fascinated with the way they build their movies over large periods of time, and wanted to try the same within episodic storytelling.

So Season 2 was set up to leave Berlin and bring us somewhere else.
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JK would have absolutely been in Season 3. But we were also branching out to a bigger story. Beyond our small world of Berlin as the Flu hit our world and had a major impact. In a lot of ways we considered Howard's story complete. There were a few more beats we wanted to hit, but we wanted to use a Season 3 as an opportunity to open up the cast of characters even wider, and use certain characters to launch them.
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Peter Quayle Prime. Ah... the room's favorite pet character. We had so many plans for Quayle Prime in Season 3. Mostly having to do with a flashback episode focused entirely on his journey out of Echo, in the moment we left him in Season 2. Emerging from the hangar and disappearing into the woods once he had run out of food.

He would eventually find his way back into his own life -- a life that had been stolen from him. But a life that still had plans for him. Mostly because of the journals he took with him. Yanek's journals from Echo. The ones that detailed how Yanek built the Crossing in 1987. An experiment, yes. But an experiment that, with enough time, might be replicated. Especially if the person had enough money to replicate it. And who might that person be?

Alexander Pope Prime. A wealthy businessman in the Prime world who would take Peter Prime under his wing and use Yanek's journals to construct a replicated experiment, far from government oversight in Northern Africa.

Morocco, to be precise. Where a second Crossing has been under construction for several years. A Crossing of a different nature. This one a giant tunnel that could ship supplies back and forth between our world. We called it... The Pipeline. And whoever controlled the Pipeline had economic control over two worlds (this would be what Season 3 was about).

Yanek's journals provided the last missing piece the scientists needed to finish the experiment, and in the opening moments of Season 3 the Pipeline was complete. The story of Season 3 was going to take place 4 years after Season 2 ended. Enough time for a lot of things to happen, including the spread of the Flu on Alpha side.

When we find Quayle Prime, he is now the (entirely unqualified) COO of Wake-Pilgrim in the Prime world. He has become the important man he always wanted to be.
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Aldrich Prime. Oh, we were so excited to meet him again. Ulrich Thomsen was growing a beard and everything, should Season 3 return.

We loved Ulrich, and loved what he did with Aldrich. And the plan was for Howard to meet him again in the desert in Season 3. A heartbroken man whose counterpart had murdered his lover. Aldrich Prime was a poet and a visionary and one of the main villains of Season 3. A man driven mad by his love for a woman he could never get back... much like Howard.
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We were so excited about doing an episode called "Patient Zero" in Season 3, that would have been all about the spread of the Flu in our world in the 1990s. We had so many unexpected ideas for how it went down.

There was nobody in particular that we had in mind, but probably by the time we developed the story further, we would have tied it into our existing arcs.

The real idea of it was to answer how it finally got sent across. How it was not the result of a decision by Management, but a PURE ACCIDENT of incompetence that spread the Flu. I'm a big believer in the incompetence of the system, when it comes to safeguards we have in place. It makes it pretty scary to be alive today (no politics, sorry). I don't believe anyone sets out to be an evil person. Evil is when we witness incompetence and allow it to continue because we think it serves our needs (again, trying to stay away from politics... but don't forget to vote for Amy McGrath if you live in Kentucky!). That was going to become a big theme when it came to how the Flu originally spread.

To be clear... Management invented the Flu (thanks, Yanek and Juma) but they didn't intentionally release it. The release was going to be something much more tragic and accidental. Something so preventable if we had just opened our eyes. But then, the cover-up was where everything would have come out. Management knew they were responsible for the Flu, even if they didn't release it. So they covered it up, internally and externally with the UN, to protect the existence of the Crossing. And that's the true sin.

Another thing I want to add... my fantasy spin-off series is a show just about Management. From the 1980s until the Present. I loved those characters and I loved working with those actors as a director. So much more we could have done. A throwback spy story about scientists who had the best of intentions but zero idea how to control what they had created.
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On the final scene of the whole series:

We're with Howard and Howard Prime. Howard Prime has hidden himself in an oceanfront cottage in the middle of nowhere. I'm thinking the English coast. He's got a glass of scotch in hand. And finally, after many years of searching, Howard Alpha has found him. They've both done so much to destroy each other's lives over the course of this series, honestly, neither man has anything left... but each other.

And as they have one final confrontation, a dialogue scene between them that would span the entirety of the episode... both men eventually brandish pistols. Firing at each other until they've expended all of their clips. They've got nothing left. And both men have been hit in the exact same place. Gut shots. Not enough to die fast, but enough to die slowly. Together.

They collapse beside each other, staring out at the night time ocean view. Waves crash on shore. No choice but to abandon their weapons and just stare at each other. Breathing together. Their breaths becoming one.

Finally, the camera TRACKS over, moving behind them. One Howard eclipsing the other Howard. Until there are not two, but one Howard seen from behind. Staring at the chaotic waves in silence. Just breathing.

This is where they meet.

Then it ends.
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I think, in the end, Emily Prime was going to realize that the best place for herself was in a world devoid of any Howard.
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Some other choice quotes:

We had probably about a third of the time to make Season 2 as we did Season 1
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We're not really exploring any other ways to tell the story [comic, etc], no. Honestly I feel like in our minds it's very complete. We told the first unit of story we wanted to tell. It has an ending. And a little tease for what could have been. Which we're living right now, and it's a nightmare. So maybe it's best left to our imaginations.

There were once some talks about doing a graphic novel prequel about Baldwin's origins. And that's an idea I did really love. Maybe if schedules clear up I'll get around to it.
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There is no EU in the Prime world. We believed heavily in that. Hence why the currency in Germany Prime is the Deutschmark and not the Euro. I don't know if that ever came out in dialogue, but it was always lurking in the background.
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The Crossing in Berlin is closed forever.

But other crossings are out there. Believe. Howard never loses faith.
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Baldwin and [Howard] Prime are two of my favorite characters to watch together. Yes, we had so many more plans. He was the father she never had, and she was the daughter he never had. How could you not want to write them eating breakfast together forever?

I think Baldwin realizes ultimately that the only place she could find a clean start was by acknowledging who she was and dealing with the trauma in her own life. Not running from it. Which was what her story in Season 3 was going to be about.
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What I wish people would comment on is how much of COUNTERPART was a comedy in our minds. Bad people failing upwards. Good people being held back. Management being a bunch of idealistic but utterly naive do-gooders who eventually committed genocide. It's a sad comedy. A tragedy. But the only way we could process it was by laughing. Just like the world we live in today.
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Bonus Starz shade:

My wife and I have been hard at work with an amazing director and amazing group of writers (some of whom came from Counterpart) on a new adaptation of SHŌGUN, and that's where my heart is right now. Hopefully we can bring that to you soon! I love my new home at FX. They're brilliant people who love a challenge and know how to market a challenge.
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Snumpus

Snumpus

user requested ban
Banned
Oct 28, 2017
118
Dammit, the plans for Season 3 sounded SO GOOD. I guess ending at Season 2 would've been better than ending at Season 3 if they planned their arcs in two-season blocks, but I'm disappointed we will never see what Morocco Prime is like. Not sure how I feel about the planned last scene of the series, but it depends on the journey they took to get there.
 
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